On the morning of May 21st, 2026, Tony Von Caruthers was strapped to a gurney inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. The execution was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. They found the first vein quickly. That part went smoothly. The second vein, required by Tennessee’s protocol, they could not find.

They tried vein after vein, puncturing his skin, moving from his arms to his chest. He told them he could still feel it. They did the puncture anyway. He was groaning. He was bleeding from multiple injection sites. And this went on for 90 minutes. Then, the governor who had denied clemency that same morning changed his mind.

Tony Von Caruthers was taken off that gurney and returned to his cell. The question is, should he have been strapped to the gurney in the first place? If you are new to this channel, support us. Like, subscribe, and turn on the notification bell. New videos like this drop every week. But to understand how it came to this, you need to go back to Memphis, Tennessee in the winter of 1994.

Because the real story starts long before a gurney in Nashville, in a neighborhood where drug money, loyalty, and betrayal all ran on the same street. And in a prison cell where a man sat and wrote letters about what he called a master plan. On May 21st, 2026, the state of Tennessee attempted to execute Tony Von Caruthers for the 1994 murders of Marcelous Anderson, his mother Deloise Anderson, and 17-year-old Frederick Tucker.

They failed. But before we get to that gurney, you need to know who the victims were. And you need to understand exactly what was set in motion from inside a prison cell long before anyone disappeared. Delois Anderson was 43 years old. She lived in North Memphis with her son Marcelous, her niece LeVanthea, and LeVanthea’s two young daughters.

She worked at a bank during the day and took classes at night. She was a mother trying to build something better for herself, for her son, for the family she was holding together under one roof. Marcelous Anderson was 21 years old. He went by Chellow. He was deep in Memphis’s drug trade, not a peripheral player, but someone with serious money, serious jewelry, and serious presence in his neighborhood.

He wore a gold and diamond ring worth more than $2,000. He carried large sums of cash on his person, held together with a diamond money clip. He kept a considerable amount of money stashed in the attic of his mother’s home. He drove borrowed cars and moved significant amounts of cocaine through the neighborhood.

He also considered Tony Carruthers a close and trustworthy friend. According to prosecutors, that misplaced trust is what got him killed. Frederick Tucker was 17 years old. He was Marcelous’s teenage friend, along for the ride that night. He had nothing to do with any power struggle over drug territory. He was just a boy who happened to be with his friend when everything went wrong.

All three of them disappeared on the night of February 24th, 1994. Their bodies were found 9 days later on March 3rd, 1994, buried together in a pit beneath another woman’s casket at Rose Hill Cemetery on Elvis Presley Boulevard in South Memphis. The hands of all three victims were bound behind their backs. Frederick Tucker’s feet also bound.

There was bruising on his neck from a ligature. Marcelo’s and Frederick had been shot. Marcelo’s mom, Delois Anderson, had been beaten and suffocated. When her body was found, she was at the bottom of the grave. The bodies of the two men were on top of her. She had a pair of socks wrapped around her neck. The medical examiner testified that Delois Anderson died from asphyxia.

 From the position of her head against her body, from dirt in her mouth and nose, and from the weight of the earth and the bodies pressing down on her. When Marcelo’s’ body was recovered, he was no longer wearing his jewelry. His cash was gone. And the man who was sentenced to death for killing them, Tony Von Carothers has been given a one-year reprieve from execution for the crime the state of Tennessee says he committed in 1994 when he was 25 years old.

The kidnapping, robbery, and murder of Marcelo’s Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker in Memphis, Tennessee on the night of February 24th, 1994. Tony Von Carothers was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He grew up poor, fatherless in any practical sense, responsible for younger siblings before he was old enough to be responsible for himself.

He came of age surrounded by the violence and drug trade that ran through the Memphis housing projects in the 1970s and ’80s. By the time he was a young man, he had accumulated a serious criminal record, not petty offenses, but violent felonies. Aggravated arson, aggravated assault and battery, armed robbery. He had also, by this point, developed ties to the Gangster Disciples street gang.

In 1993, Caruthers was sitting in a Tennessee prison serving time for those convictions. And while he was sitting in that cell, he wrote two letters to a friend and convicted felon named Jimmy Lee Mays Jr. Those letters would later become central to the prosecution’s case against him. In the letters, he referred to what he called a master plan, one that was a winner.

He wrote that he intended to make those streets pay him. He announced that everything he did from that point forward would be, in his own words, well organized and extremely violent. He was still behind bars. He was already planning what came next. Now, here is the detail that makes this case unlike almost any other.

While incarcerated at the Mark Luttrell Reception Center in Memphis, awaiting release, Caruthers was assigned to a work detail at the West Tennessee Veterans Cemetery. He was out there helping to bury the dead. And at some point, as he stood over one of those open graves, he turned to a fellow inmate named Charles Ray Smith and said, “This would be a good way, you know, to bury somebody if you’re going to kill them.

If you ain’t got no body, you don’t have a case.” He was digging graves as a prison work detail. And staring into one of those holes, he told another prisoner exactly how to commit the perfect murder. That same year, Caruthers and a fellow inmate, James Montgomery, himself a violent felon with convictions for armed robbery, plotted together to take over the drug trade in their Memphis neighborhood.

To do that, they needed to remove Marcellus Anderson and his main dealer, Andre Johnson. Prosecutor Jerry Harris described Marcellus Anderson this way at trial. He was not a choir boy. He had money. He had access to dope. He had a car, and he had his badge, a big-time money ring full of diamonds. Marcelos was also the man who had given Carruthers $200 when he was released from prison.

He had helped him out. And according to the prosecution, Carruthers repaid that generosity by planning his murder. Carruthers has maintained his innocence for 30 years. He has never wavered once. What the prosecution had, what they built their entire case on, was not physical evidence. It was people. People who said they had heard Carruthers talk about the crime.

People who said he had confessed or boasted about it. A paid informant, convicted felons, prison witnesses. Not one fingerprint. Not one DNA match. Not one piece of forensic evidence placed Tony Carruthers at Rosehill Cemetery on the night of February 24th, 1994. By the fall of 1993, the plan that Carruthers and Montgomery had put together from their prison cells was taking shape.

About 2 weeks before Christmas 1993, Jimmy Lee Maze, the man Carruthers had written the letters to, saw Carruthers loading three antifreeze containers into a car. Carruthers indicated to Maze that the containers were not filled with antifreeze. They were filled with gasoline. Why would a man who had just been paroled be filling antifreeze containers with gasoline? That question sat in the background of everything that followed.

On January 11th, 1994, James Montgomery was released from prison. The two men who had plotted together from their cells were now both free. The plan was no longer a letter. It was active. Almost immediately after his release, Montgomery visited a man named Andre Johnson, Marcelos Anderson’s drug associate, and told him directly that he, James Montgomery, was now in charge of the neighborhood.

He was announcing a takeover. Johnson understood the threat. He went to warn people. On February 23rd, 1994, the day before the murders, Marcelos Anderson borrowed a white Jeep Cherokee from his cousin Michael Harris. That Jeep would become the vehicle of the kidnapping and would later be found burned in Mississippi.

At around 4:30 in the afternoon on February 24th, 1994, witnesses saw Marcelos Anderson and Frederick Tucker riding in that white Jeep Cherokee alongside James and Jonathan Montgomery. That same evening, LeVencia came home to find the house quiet in a way that felt wrong. Her aunt’s car was in the driveway. Her purse was on the counter.

Her keys were in their place. And there on the table, a plate of greens that DeLoyce had served herself for dinner, uneaten, still sitting there as if she had just stepped outside for a moment and would be right back. LeVencia assumed her aunt had just stepped out. She went about her evening. She was still waiting when it became clear something was very wrong.

According to the prosecution’s account, Caruthers and Montgomery had gone to DeLoyce Anderson’s home that night, lured her out or entered the house, and taken her, either because she could identify them or because she gave them leverage over her son. She was interrupted mid-dinner. She did not leave willingly.

They forced her to call Marcelos. He came home. He brought Frederick Tucker with him, a 17-year-old who had no idea what was waiting inside that house. According to paid informant Alfredo Shaw’s account, Caruthers put a gun to Marcelos and ordered all three of them into the Jeep Cherokee. They drove to Rose Hill Cemetery on Elvis Presley Boulevard.

And this is where the plan that Carothers had conceived in a prison graveyard became reality. At the cemetery, they dug a pit beneath a pre-constructed grave. A woman was already scheduled to be buried there the following morning. The grave was prepared. The headstone was in place. All they had to do was dig deeper beneath the floor of that grave, creating a secondary pit large enough for three people.

Marcelos and Frederick were shot and beaten. Delois Anderson, the woman who had done nothing more than answer her phone and call her son home, was placed in the pit with them. They covered the bodies with dirt and a single piece of plywood. Then came the concrete vault. Then came the casket. The burial took place the following morning of February 25th, a grieving family standing at the graveside, saying goodbye to their loved one with no idea that three people lay directly beneath their feet.

That same evening, Jonathan Montgomery told a man named Chris Hines what had happened. He said they had stolen $200,000. He named Cello. He said they had killed Cello and them out at the cemetery of Elvis Presley. He said this the same night. The bodies were still underground. And he was already boasting about it.

The white Jeep Cherokee was driven to Mississippi and set on fire. The evidence was supposed to be gone. The bodies were supposed to be gone. In Tony Carothers’ own words from that prison graveyard, “If you ain’t got no body, you don’t have a case.” A missing person’s report was filed. Days passed. Then came a break.

Jonathan Montgomery, James Montgomery’s brother, the same man who had boasted to Chris Haynes on the night of the murders, led authorities to the grave at Rose Hill Cemetery. News broke across Memphis that a suspect had led police to a recently buried woman’s grave on Elvis Presley Boulevard. Authorities obtained a court order to exhume the body.

Under the casket, beneath a single piece of plywood and several inches of dirt, they found all three of them. Marcelos Anderson, Frederick Tucker, and at the bottom, beneath both of them, Delois Anderson. The woman with the uneaten plate of greens still on her kitchen table. Their hands were bound behind their backs.

Frederick Tucker’s feet were bound. Delois had a pair of socks wrapped around her neck. Jonathan Montgomery was arrested. He was also charged. And before he ever went to trial, before he ever had to take the stand or enter a plea, Jonathan Montgomery was found hanging in his jail cell. He died before the case ever reached a courtroom.

Then came Alfredo Shaw. Shaw was a career informant, a man who had floated in and out of Shelby County Jail since the 1980s, trading testimony for money, protection, and reduced exposure. In March 1994, after seeing news reports about the cemetery murders, Shaw called Crime Stoppers and gave a statement to Memphis police.

He claimed that Tony Carruthers had confessed the murders to him personally while the two were together in the jail law library. He gave specific details. He said Carruthers had even tried to recruit him for the crime, and that he had refused. Two days after Shaw gave that statement, on March 29th, 1994, the grand jury returned indictments against Tony Carothers and James Montgomery.

Then Shaw recanted. Before the trial, Shaw went to Fox 13 News in Memphis and gave a televised interview. He said his entire statement had been fabricated. He said prosecutors had coerced him and paid him for his testimony. He said the confession never happened. But what the public and the jury never knew, what was hidden for 30 years, was that Alfredo Shaw was a paid career informant working for the state, for the Sheriff’s Department, for the Memphis Police Department, and for federal law enforcement.

He had been on the payroll all along. There were also three other key witnesses for the prosecution. Jimmy Lee Maze, the convicted felon who had received Carothers’ prison letters and watched him fill antifreeze containers with gasoline. Maze also claimed Carothers had pointed to Marcelus once and said it would be the best time to kidnap him.

Charles Ray Smith, the fellow inmate from the cemetery work detail, who had heard Carothers say that burying someone under a casket was the perfect crime. And beyond those witnesses, there was a blanket found buried with the three victims. Testing found an unknown male DNA profile on that blanket. It did not match Tony Carothers.

Fingerprints were also recovered from the crime scene. They did not match Tony Carothers. Neither the fingerprints nor the DNA were ever compared to any alternative suspect. Not before trial, not during 30 years of appeals, not at any point. The trial took place in Shelby County, Tennessee, before a Shelby County jury.

From the very beginning, it was procedurally extraordinary and not in a good way. Tony Carothers refused to cooperate with his court-appointed attorneys. He repeatedly complained about them, accused them of inadequate representation, and threatened to harm several of them. The trial judge, viewing his behavior as willful obstruction rather than as a symptom of mental illness, ruled that Caruthers would represent himself.

A man with no legal training, with paranoia and delusions that his current attorneys argue were symptoms of genuine mental illness, stood alone against the full weight of the Shelby County prosecution in a triple murder capital case. He cross-examined witnesses himself. He made his own arguments to the jury.

He navigated evidentiary rules without counsel. And when he called Alfredo Shaw to the stand to expose him as a liar, the prosecution made a threat. They announced in open court that if Shaw contradicted his original grand jury testimony, he would be charged with two counts of aggravated perjury. Shaw took the stand.

And under the threat of prosecution, a man who had publicly admitted on television that his testimony was fabricated, told the jury exactly what the prosecution needed him to say. The jury never knew Shaw was a paid state informant. That fact was hidden from them for 30 years. It was only formally acknowledged by the state attorney 2 years before the 2026 execution attempt.

On April 26th, 1996, the Shelby County jury delivered its verdict. Tony Vaughn Caruthers was found guilty of three counts of first-degree premeditated murder, three counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, and one count of especially aggravated robbery. The jury sentenced him to death on each murder conviction.

Three death sentences for a man who never confessed, who maintained his innocence throughout, convicted entirely on the testimony of convicted felons and a paid informant who had already recanted on television. James Montgomery, convicted alongside him, also originally sentenced to death, later won a new trial.

The medical examiner who had testified that the victims were buried alive recanted. A second pathologist concluded the victims had not been buried alive at all. With that central aggravating factor dismantled, prosecutors offered Montgomery a plea deal for second-degree murder, 27 years. James Montgomery walked out of prison in 2015.

He has been free for over a decade. Tony Carruthers was still on death row. Tony Von Carruthers arrived at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville in 1996. He would spend the next 30 years there. During those 30 years, he filed appeals at every level: state courts, federal courts, the US Supreme Court.

Every argument was heard. Every argument was rejected. The paid informant, the self-representation, the lack of physical evidence, the unmatched fingerprints and DNA. All of it was rejected. Throughout this time, Carruthers refused to submit to mental health evaluations. His attorneys argued this refusal was itself a symptom of his paranoia and delusional thinking, that his psychiatric condition prevented him from understanding or cooperating with the process designed to assess him.

Courts repeatedly ruled the opposite. In 2011, James Montgomery, the man who had walked free, gave a statement saying Tony Carruthers had not been involved in the murders at all. He pointed investigators toward a different man entirely. That statement triggered no new investigation. The alternative suspect was never pursued.

In the years leading up to 2026, the case gained significant public attention. Faith leaders, Caruthers’ family, and celebrity Kim Kardashian all urged Governor Bill Lee to pause the execution and allow DNA and fingerprint testing. More than 50,000 petition signatures were hand-delivered to the Tennessee capital.

Protests took place ahead of the execution. Former death row exonerees, people who had been wrongfully convicted and later freed, publicly advocated for him. Yet none of it stopped the execution. In April 2026, the ACLU filed emergency motions demanding that the unmatched fingerprints and the unknown male DNA found on the blanket buried with the victims be tested against the alternative suspect Montgomery had identified in 2011.

The state of Tennessee refused. The courts denied the motion. The execution date held. On the morning of May 21st, 2026, Governor Bill Lee denied clemency. He said, “After deliberate consideration of Tony Von Caruthers’ request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the state of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene.

” Hours later, the execution began. His last meal is not reported in official records. At approximately 10:00 a.m. on May 21st, 2026, the execution of Tony Von Caruthers began at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. And what happened inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on the morning of May 21st, 2026 is one of the most disturbing execution accounts in modern American history.

By 10:22 a.m. Caruthers was on the gurney, strapped down, waiting for the state to administer the lethal injection. Medical personnel began trying to establish venous access around 10:24 a.m. At 10:31 a.m., they were still trying to get a vein in Caruthers’ right arm after three or four attempts. The person attempting the force said the veins were rolling.

After establishing an four line in Caruthers’ right arm, medical personnel tried his other arm, his left hand, and his left foot before trying to establish a central line. A central line is a catheter inserted into a large vein, typically in the neck or chest. It is a medical procedure requiring specific training and qualifications.

According to an emergency filing with the Tennessee Supreme Court, protocols called for putting in a central line, but the doctor was not qualified to perform the procedure. The doctor started pushing the needle in and Caruthers was groaning. Caruthers’ lawyer, Deliberato, said Caruthers was in a lot of pain.

The doctor kept trying to stick the line and there was blood coming out. Deliberato saw two to three puncture wounds. She said there was a lot of blood. Before the doctor attempted to place the central line, he could be heard telling Caruthers that he was about to administer the local anesthetic lidocaine, a local anesthesia that prevents pain by numbing localized areas of the body.

Minutes later, Deliberato could be heard questioning if the doctor was qualified to perform the procedure. “Do your job, sir.” Said another man identified by Deliberato as a member of the state attorney general’s staff. A state attorney general’s representative was telling a struggling, unqualified doctor to keep going.

 Keep sticking needles into a man who was groaning in pain on the gurney. Just after 11:20 a.m., almost an hour into the executioner’s struggle to place four lines, Caruthers could be heard groaning in pain. Witnesses outside the chamber who were not granted full access did hear what sounded like groans through a crack beneath the door connecting the two rooms.

At 11:22 a.m., the doctor said he was not able to set a central line. Deliberato said Caruthers was in agony and his chest hurt. They tortured him when they tried to do the central line. At 11:27 a.m., medical personnel tried for a second vein in Caruthers’ right shoulder. At 11:30 a.m.

, they claimed it was set and said there was flow times two. At 11:40 a.m., the warden got a phone call in the execution chamber. He said they were not doing it and were taking Caruthers off the gurney and taking the IVs out. And this went on for over an hour. The four line in his shoulder was filled with blood that had backfilled toward his chest area.

The execution was over. Not because Tony Caruthers had been saved, but because the state of Tennessee could not find a vein. The doctor the state of Tennessee contracted to execute Tony Caruthers was not qualified to perform the very procedure his own execution protocol required. Moments later, Governor Bill Lee issued a new statement.

I am granting Tony Von Caruthers a temporary reprieve from execution for 1 year. Tony Von Caruthers was returned to his cell at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. He is scheduled to face execution again before May 21st, 2027. The fingerprints from the crime scene still have not been compared to any alternative suspect.

The unknown male DNA found the blanket buried with the three victims still has not been tested against any alternative suspect. And Tony Von Carothers, now 57 years old, still maintains he had nothing to do with the murders of Marcellus Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker. Tony Von Carothers is still alive after a botched execution.

The man the state of Tennessee says masterminded all of it and came up with the idea says he is innocent. There is no fingerprint that puts Tony Carothers at that cemetery. No DNA. No physical evidence of any kind. The man convicted alongside him walked out of prison in 2015. He later said Carothers was not involved and pointed to someone else.

That someone else has never been investigated. But here’s the question that keeps disturbing everyone. Three people were buried alive in a Memphis cemetery in February 1994. They deserve justice. Their families deserved answers. But is Tony Von Carothers the man who put them there? Or is the state of Tennessee about to execute a man for a crime it has never once been able to prove he committed while the actual evidence sits untested in a storage room? Drop your answer in the comments below.

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